Junkyard Find: 1989 Honda Accord LX-i Coupe
Published: September 8th, 2020
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Once Honda started building second-generation Accords in Ohio, the limits of the Voluntary Export Restraint agreement between Japanese automakers and the United States government ceased to mean much for American Honda shoppers. The third-generation Accord debuted in the 1986 model year and sales of these Marysville-built cars boomed. Most were sensible, low-priced Accord DX hatchbacks and sedans, but some rakehell Accord shoppers went for the sporty fuel-injected coupes packed with snazzy options. Here’s one of those cars, a 1989 LX-i Coupe in a Denver-area yard.
The ’89 Accord coupe line started with the carbureted DX for $11,650, moved up to the plusher, fuel-injected LX-i at $14,690, and reached its zenith with the loaded $16,975 SE-i (those prices come to about $24,925, $31,430, and $36,320, respectively, in 2020 dollars). The DX 3-door hatchback cost a mere $11,230 (if you could find a rare American dealer who wasn’t charging way above MSRP in 1989, of course).
Pop-up headlights were all the rage around this time (remember how common “one-eyed” cars with one light stuck shut or open were back then?), but the Accord lost them when the fourth-generation cars appeared for the 1990 model year.
This 2.0-liter A20 engine made a strong (for 1989) 120 horsepower in a car weighing just over 2,600 pounds.
With a 5-speed manual transmission, which this car has, the ’89 Accord LX-i was nearly as quick as its Prelude Si cousin.
This car boasts cruise control, power windows, power remote side mirrors, air conditioning, and other goodies that were still considered high-end options in the small cars of the late 1980s.
Most of the Accords of the 1980s that I find in junkyards will show at least 200,000 miles on the odometer (and a few have better than 400,000 miles on the clock), but this car barely squeezed into six-figure territory during its 31 years on the planet.
Perhaps this car’s final owner just couldn’t figure out how to solve its mechanical problems, even with the excellent-quality factory service manual still in the car on its final journey.
I haven’t been able to learn much about these factory aluminum wheels with the specs (including bead type) molded into the metal, but they don’t seem to be the wheels that were on this car when it left the showroom.
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It seems that Honda pushed the sedan and wagon versions of the Accord much more heavily than the coupes, so we’ll watch a home-market sedan commercial featuring music by Gershwin.For links to 2,000+ more of these Junkyard Finds, go to the Junkyard Home of the Murilee Martin Lifestyle Brand™.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Oh I thought that you sell parts off the car
Well now I know I can’t buy no parts from you imma just keep looking